Unraveled, Week 10/2022

Friends, it has been A Day already -- and it's only mid-morning! I had an early dentist appointment this morning and then started to get a migraine aura as I sat down to breakfast. As if that wasn't enough, it started snowing! This was my view on the way home from my appointment (don't worry, I was stopped at a red light) -- locals or those familiar with Pittsburgh will recognize the building at the center whose top floors are obscured here:

And have I mentioned it's my birthday today? This is not at all how I envisioned the day going, but the pain is subsiding and the house is quiet, so I guess it can only get better from here.

As it is Wednesday, that means it's time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers. I had so hoped to have a finished and modeled sweater to share with you this morning. Alas, I have gotten buried under work this week with a 40+-page magazine layout that has to get finished today, and I just haven't had much time to knit in the evenings. But I promise it's going to be done today, come hell or or high water (or snow drifts?), because here is where things stand with my Shifty:

I finished the rest of the patterned rounds on the second sleeve last night and have just started the cuff as I've been catching up on blogs this morning. I just need to finish that cuff and weave in the ends and it will be DONE. I hereby promise an official FO post this Friday.

Reading has been mostly good this week. I've finished three books and really enjoyed two of them.

My first finish, The Last Rose of Shanghai, was an Amazon First Reads selection set in Shanghai in the early 1940s and centers around the relationship between a Chinese woman and a Jewish refugee man. It sounded intriguing to me because I'd only recently become aware of Jewish refugees who fled Europe for China in WWII (there's a great PBS show about them, if you're interested), but unfortunately the book turned out to be massively disappointing. I still finished it because I was invested just enough to want to know how it ended, but I do not recommend it. I'll direct you to my Goodreads review if you want to know more details. I gave it 1 star, and it's finally convinced me that I don't have to take a free book every month.

I needed a new audiobook to listen to over the weekend, so I went to my "to read" tags on Libby and found Girl, Serpent, Thorn, which I'm pretty sure I heard about on the Novel Pairings podcast. This is a sort-of retelling of Sleeping Beauty but with very strong influences of Persian myths and folktales. It turned out to be a good one to listen to because the reader correctly pronounces all the non-English words and even reads some of the dialogue in an appropriate accent, giving a very atmospheric feel to the narration. I really enjoyed this tale of self-awareness, identity, good versus evil, and whether a curse can be a gift. I gave it 4 stars.

Finally, I stayed up a little bit past my bedtime last night to finish reading 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World. I know many of you have already read this and other works by Elif Shafak, but this was the first of her books I've read -- and it certainly won't be the last. Though there are some parts in this book that are very hard to read and it deals with some very seriously subjects, it's a beautiful study of finding happiness and one's found family in a world that is often inhospitable to those who don't fall into the socially accepted categories of what makes a "good" or "respectable" person. I gave it 4 stars.

I'm hoping to find time this week to finish A Spindle Splintered, which I haven't been able to get back to since the night I started it, and, of course, spend some more time with Braiding Sweetgrass.

I also wanted to mention that rather than having a pattern sale for my birthday, I've decided to donate all profits from my Ravelry and Payhip stores today to the Ukraine relief efforts of the International Rescue Committee. I feel very lucky to be safe, warm, and well fed today, so it seems only right to pay it forward in some way. If you're so inclined to buy a pattern or send one to a friend as a gift, I would appreciate it. There are links to both shops near the top right of the page.